Getting the Buy-In for Your Patient Advocacy Initiatives (Step 1)

There you are at lunch—chomping down on another salad—when all of a sudden it hits you: a brilliant idea to improve the patient experience in your organization. It’s a fantastic idea. One which will certainly transform the way staff and management at your hospital interacts with patients. It’s genius—and you’re a genius for thinking of it. You pause. You panic. Now what? Well, now comes the fun part: you have to convince other people just how great your idea is—or rather you have to get buy-in. But how?

Step 1: Getting buy-in from yourself

An often overlooked first step is: assessing your own buy-in. So, start by asking yourself whether you’re truly committed to the initiative you are proposing. If the answer is yes, then you will be able to stand up to the naysayers who will try to derail your proposal.

Now that you have your own buy-in, you need to decide what role you want to play. Will it be the champion who leads the initiative and makes the effort to get it approved? The cheerleader, who encourages others to lead and adopt the initiative? Or the instigator, who plants the seed of the idea with lots of people in order to build a groundswell of support until a champion can emerge.

No matter which role you choose, you need to do your homework. Research and talk to others who have done something similar—become an expert on the subject. The more you know, the more confident you’ll be. The more you read, the more credible your arguments will be.